


The Hive

by Vee



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Dark, Drug Addiction, Drugs, Dystopia, Future, Multi, Power Play, Urban Fantasy, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:27:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Human beings have taken to the skies and the nearby stars. The ground is scorched and the oceans are contaminated. The off-planet mining of resources has become the basis for an all-new economy. Mutations in human physiology have taken root after generations of government-mandated pharmaceutical dependence, producing offspring of those genetic peaks and valleys. Those from the peaks are known as Aces.</p><p>But even if you aren’t born “lucky” enough to be an Ace, there are ways to experience the same insight, power, and euphoria. Zone is natural, effective, and the only side effect is its addictive nature and an incredibly shortened lifespan. The government has tried to get its hands on Zone, and needless to say it has been thwarted… until now.</p><p>Just a couple of years ago, the Zone trade was run almost 100% by The Hive, a group of highly skilled and well-organized Aces who knew the business inside and out. Then, something happened – something not yet quite clear – and the Hive has broken off into rival Schools while control of the Zone trade is contested over the planets, ships, and ports of call that make up the world as it is known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The elder Midorima Shintarou made his fortune in the cloudbusting trade. It was a skilled job, a dangerous job, and a lucrative job if you got in with the right firm. A generation ago, though, there hadn’t been many trades beside it. There were two classes of people, really: those who engineered a future for Phoeneca, and everyone else. The service class was only regarded so long as it was useful, and seeing his mother grow up under its wage ceiling Shintarou vowed he would follow in his father’s footsteps or else find a whole new way to make a living. When it came time to elect his vocation, he was enrolled in every technical and scientific academy in hopes of the family trade being passed on.

Being led into the quiet room away from the other parents at the assessment assembly had come as a surprise to Mr. Midorima, but the revelation that followed did not. He could read it in their eyes, in the grave way their faces tried too hard to balance between pitying and stern. All any parent wanted to know in that situation (and every parent was advised to expect it, and to only be grateful if the day never came), was

“Which one is he?”

No one was alive who could really remember back when the word Ace had a positive connotation. At least the Aces had options, though. Parents could keep them if they chose.

Shintarou’s parents hadn’t. He went by the family name these days only because it sounded better, flowed easier off the tongue.

“Just difficult enough to prove you were actually trying.” He turned away from the portal window and smiled to himself. When it felt like a victory, it was a rush. Sometimes it just felt like another session of complicated dance choreographed long in advance. Of course, even the victories were that, but he tried his hardest not to believe it. The best technologies were at his disposal, at his ship’s disposal, at his School’s disposal. Even the position of the stars had to be in his favor, even the latticework of satellite connections in the sky at their most perfect symmetry, before he would pounce the way he had that evening. “Cunning does not make you a tactician. Zone does not make you a Hunter. And to be quite frank, it also looks bad on you.”

He only spoke out of turn when turns were all he had, when Akashi couldn’t talk back. He knew as well as anyone that Extractors didn’t have to be Hunters, nor vice versa. You could take a person down just as easily with luck as with strategy, but finesse was something neither failed to bring to their chosen professions. Therefore, he had to celebrate his victories where he found them. He’d fulfilled his oldest wish, after all: he’d found a whole new way to make a living.  

The Hive found him at age 13, living homeless on the streets. Akashi found him shortly after, during the first lucid days he’d had in months. Hiding underground like a rat, one got used to darkness and despair, and one also got used to drugs. Akashi was the first person he knew who told him what he really was; what they both really were. All his life, he’d heard Aces talked about in horrified whispers. _Mutations, abominations, hopeless souls_ , and then Akashi put it in a totally different way: “We’re better than people.”

Zone only made that distinction smoother, made the body feel better about holding all that potential. Terms like “expanding the mind” seemed cliché, but that was the closest description of what it felt like.

“Are you in right now?” Midorima walked over to the figure sitting against the wall of his command suite, crossing the floor in three long strides. Knowing he wouldn’t be given an answer, insomuch, he knelt down and took Akashi’s face delicately in one hand. His skin was warm even through the fabric of Midorima’s gloves, but body temperature was always an unfair barometer when dealing with Aces who were also users. He’d have to see his eyes. “Open them,” Midorima said coolly, long eyelashes closing in a slow blink.

Of course, Akashi was not about to make it easy for him, and just bit harder on the wad of leather shoved inside of his mouth. When he breathed in through his nose, the tape over his lips went concave. Midorima watched it thoughtfully. Still, Akashi did not open his eyes.

“Hm.” Methodically, Midorima dragged a gloved finger down one side of his face. “You’re actually much less interesting when you’re not talking mazes around everyone. Pretty, though.”

Truly, he was; unlike most recreational drugs from the days before the drugs themselves caused the genetic frays known as Acetypicals (Ace sounded better, rolled more smoothly off the tongue), Zone actually benefited the body’s metabolism and heightened the effects of nutrients ingested. The result, with a well-crafted brand, was clear, porcelain-smooth skin, shiny hair, muscle tone and the energy to maintain it, and a very healthy libido. Though Akashi had it all, he also had an acute way with self-control.

Midorima sniffed the warm air close to him and detected the coppery, metallic tinge of the industrial grid, affectionately known as the Oven, where Rakuzan operated and Akashi spent most of his days. It was a sweltering, noisy hellhole, as far as Midorima was concerned, and often he courted Akashi to switch the School’s base of operations to the skies. However, it was a strategic location. The noise and discomfort made it an inopportune site for raids, and staying in good graces (monetarily) with the factory owners made it easy to burrow havens of air conditioning and electricity beneath the labyrinthine steel girders.

“Well, supposing you aren’t in, I should think of how I’m going to do this.”

He paused for a moment, giving Akashi a chance to protest physically. The chance was not taken, of course, because Akashi didn’t believe him. Midorima sat back on his haunches and sighed, tilting the chin up, glancing behind Akashi’s back to make sure the ties around his wrists were still in place. “I mean, normally it isn’t my specialty, but since you were so kind as to extract our Captain last week – yes I know it was you – it’s only natural that I return the favor.”

Midorima could practically hear him saying “you’re welcome” in the silence that followed. He’d inherited the position, and as new Captain of the Shuutoku Guard he was afforded significantly more free time to play cat for his favorite mouse. He was young for a Captain, of course. But that was one of the quiet rules of the underground: the Hive ascended. It always, always ascended. And quickly, too. None of the former members had much time left to make their mark, after all. They’d all been users, at some point. Graduation would come sooner or later. Or, more popularly, deals would be worked from the inside, trading the life of a still-living, high-ranking Ace for the position upon their “untimely” death. Midorima had chanced upon such a promotion, and hadn’t even made the shady deal usually required. On a better day, Akashi would call it a present.

Blades weren’t Midorima’s style – in fact, extraction wasn’t his style in the first place – but he was getting used to the feeling of the long, thin knife in his hand. It was a present from Takao, a token of his ascension, a silent wish that he take vigilant care of himself. He pulled it out of the sheath on his ankle, where he kept it just in case push came to shove. After a flourish of critical motions, letting it catch the light so he could verify the steel was absolutely clean, he didn’t even take a moment’s time for preparation before sending it out in a quick sweep against Akashi’s cheek. The metal sliced through the skin like rice paper.

It would have been disappointing if he’d flinched. Of course he didn’t. The cut was razor thin, testament to the fineness of the blade, and only after a few moments did the wound pink, then redden, then overflow with a couple of fat drops of blood. Still, no opened eyes.

“This knife,” Midorima began with all the pleasure of a lecture on quantum mechanics, “will go through your spine. The back of your neck. But not before it goes through both your Achilles tendons, because I know how you can run. Not as much blood lost from an Achilles snap, believe it or not. And it cuts down on the mess if there’s a struggle. Then, I wonder...”

He would have thought out loud if his thoughts hadn’t branched off into two separate and concurrent trains of hypothesis. Tapping the tip of the knife on his chin as he waited for both possibilities to reach their mental conclusions, he smiled and went on. He always sounded cold and calculating, but without the same glee that Akashi’s cold and calculating always had. In fact, for Midorima it seemed like a chore to imagine the scenarios. He found more exhilaration in the laboratory, over the deep-mapping systems, trying to perfect the synthesis that was going to take Shuutoku Guard to the top of the world.

“Nothing’s easy, after that. I mean, here --” he gestured vaguely, “—we’re not concerned with the extraction process itself as much as, say, Rakuzan. Or even Kaijou. Our purity is in our process, in our refinement formulas. So it really doesn’t matter to me if I string up your limbs one by one and let you dry out in the drip room. Or, I could throw you in the pit and do it the raw way, bones and all, street grade shit. If it’s up to me I’m going to do the latter, because I don’t like cutting bone.” He lived by a simple creed: if he needed to take his gloves off for it, it was too messy for him.

The knife moved down, tracking a patient and teasing path down Akashi’s leg, dragging over his ankles with the broadside, scraping over the soles of his bare feet with the edge of the blade. Midorima tilted Akashi’s chin up again, leaned in closer, and hovered as near to his lips as he dared.

“You never give me a reaction,” he stated the patently obvious, the expected. The knife, he drew back up the inside of Akashi’s leg. The blade made its scraping sound over the rough fabric of his pants, and Midorima stopped just short of his crotch.

Akashi’s legs parted, voluntarily of course.

“I’ll do it. You know the only thing holding me back, little mouse.” Opening his lips slightly, Midorima pulled the knife back just enough to tease the very point over the front of his pants. He continued the teasing until he was concentrating hard enough to hear Akashi’s breath hitch just the tiniest bit when the point pressed a little too hard.

His teeth gripped his bottom lip for a moment, and he leaned in slightly to relieve his own tension. First he kissed the balmy plastic of the tape on Akashi’s lips, then he let go of a grunt as he edged his chin to the side and continued in a line of hungry kisses down his neck.  

Out of his nearly-sitting position, his knees hit the metal floor and Midorima dragged the tip of the knife up to point at Akashi’s stomach, probably too close for comfort, the tip scraping and poking while Akashi couldn’t help taking deeper breaths through his nose. With Midorima’s other hand clutching madly at his crotch, even he didn’t have much of a physical choice.

“I’ll do it,” Midorima breathed again, stalling for the sake of his own racing thoughts. “Unless you open your eyes and show me that you’re in.” A pause. He whispered into Akashi’s ear: “Have I won?”

His eyes flew open. Midorima dropped the blade immediately, knowing it had only been a prop anyway. “Damn it,” he nearly laughed, and at the same time let out the breath he’d been holding. Akashi’s eyes were two different shades, one the typical crimson of even his most sober days, the other a bright, fractal gold. The deformity was caused by the non-fatal overdose in his teens. Everyone thought he might be different after that, and he was; Akashi said the experience had taken him to a level he would never come back from. And if his track record were any indication, he hadn’t been embellishing the truth.

Still, the golden eye only lit up when he was deep in the Zone. Maybe Midorima had never meant to go through with it, or maybe he had. Either way, they’d probably never find out if he really had it in him. Killing him might be satisfying, but in the long run it was not the endgame Midorima wanted. What he desired was the specimen of Akashi, from his blood to his brain. The crop would be unimaginably profitable – could you imagine distilling the Zone of the former leader of the Hive? Connoisseurs would pay any price for the novelty alone, much less the potential of that high.

But the brain… it was compromised if he died in that state. And no one had yet developed an effective process to separate Zone from the bloodstream during the distillation process, and as such “contaminated” sources were considered street grade. It was not what Akashi deserved, and it was not what Midorima wanted.

He swore he could see Akashi smirk beneath the tape on his mouth. They’d do it again next week, try again, let the cards fall where they might. Date night was always a complicated affair for them. Almost disappointingly, they’d have to move on to more pedestrian pursuits. 


	2. Chapter 2

Days turned to weeks very easily, and weeks turned to months. Time did not discriminate, but the irony of a severely shortened life expectancy still could not persuade Aomine to wake up most days. The ongoing sequester was as good as being exiled, being quarantined. Cut off from the world, at the very basic level. If he had nothing to do with the world he loved, he wanted nothing to do with the world that had rejected him.

“Did you sleep in here again?” He could call her Momoi, she didn’t mind. He could call her Satsuki, she didn’t mind. Everyone else called her QB, or more formally the Queen. Certain perks of familiarity followed you around when you’d known the kingpin of the Zone trade since you were both children with futures and families.

She was screwing the backs onto her earrings when she entered. They were heavy, and they were diamonds. Diamonds hadn’t been mined as luxury items for centuries. Those who wore them were quite literally flashing plumage, but not as grandly as those who wore ivory or real, antique fur. Momoi also wore both of those things, high heels clicking on the floor as she approached Aomine. “You have a room, you know. And it’s a very nice room.”

Despite what seemed like the start of a harangue, her voice was soft, melodious, and (with Aomine at least) always loving. Her boys were important to her. Even for those who no longer associated with her, she only wanted the best. But for the one still in her charge, she tried every day to demand it.

“I got tired here,” Aomine murmured through a yawn, rolling to sit up. It was obvious by the way he took stock of his surroundings as he blinked into consciousness that he wasn’t entirely sure where he was. Then, it dawned on him. Then, another need entirely took over.

He squirmed and reached into his back pocket, pulling out a container small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. His was matte black, with an engraved design he couldn’t give up holding on to, no matter how long ago the old days had been. The Hive and its sigil staring back at him were sometimes the only things that reminded him of where he was, where he’d come from, and how long it had been.

Years seemed like days, if you used enough.

“You’re really not wasting time today, are you?” Momoi crossed her arms and waited as Aomine opened the case, pulled out a single fibrous strip, tipped his head back, and placed it in one wide open eye. It wasn’t the safest way to ingest it – his eyes turned toxic blue as a result, for a few hours every day – but it was the most effective. Besides, even though they were intended for oral use, the topical strips were the trademark of the Touou Hand.

Aomine moaned softly and closed his eyes, holding the lid shut with his fingers while the stuff went ferociously ice cold for a few moments, making his sinuses go numb for just as long as it took for the stuff to work its way in. A small explosion of calm followed, putting him back on an even keel, lethargic though that tended to be. He’d been no better than a junkie for months, ever since the price on his head rose exponentially and Momoi suggested he enter a sequester.

“Do I ever waste time?” He sniffled as his sinuses began the usual momentary drain, and smirked at Momoi. He did not wait for her to answer, not that she would have. “You’re dressed up. Business meeting?”

The tone was implicit; Aomine wanted to still be the one attending those meetings along with her. Viceroy or bodyguard, it didn’t matter. Momoi needed neither, but he liked the thrill that came with intimidating others. These days – most of them – he lacked the energy to even do that.

“In a way. Someone’s on his way here, I thought I’d give him the full reception.”

“Hm.” Aomine leaned back on his elbows. “You’re messing around with pronouns. That means I know the person.”

“Yes,” she smiled and put a single finger to her lips. “We both do. He’s an old colleague.”

Aomine sat up slightly, and she knew he was going to start blindly guessing before he thought through the logic. Aomine had never been one to think through most situations. It’s what had gotten him in trouble with every School in the system, honestly; he didn’t honor agreements and he didn’t think tactically unless it was one-on-one. Momoi didn’t mind sending him for Extraction missions if the objective was clear, on days when he was lucid enough, but keeping him under lock, key, and consistent Zone sedation seemed a good way to hedge bets for the Touou Hand.

If he weren’t such a good friend, she’d have extracted him herself some time ago. His blood was that valuable.

If Aomine thought about it, it would only take a few moments to know who was on his way. Akashi did not announce his visits. Midorima did not venture planetside. Murasakibara hadn’t been heard from since leaving for Goerin, and no one had heard from Kuroko since the incident. Which only left one old colleague who would not incite a riot to be on his way.

She was about to simply tell him, when the phone in her pocket buzzed (a prim, very elegant sound).

“Hello?” She answered, knowing it was Sakurai.

“He’s here.”

“That’s good, show him into the crystal room. I’ll be right up.”

“Highness—“ which was how she preferred to be addressed, “—please hurry.”

“You sound tense.”

“Highness, he’s brought a pair of burnpaws.”

Momoi laughed, reiterated that she would be on her way shortly, and ended the call. With a grin on her face, she turned back to Aomine, half-expecting him to be back to sleep. He was bleary-eyed, but interested enough to be scowling intently at her.

 _“Kise_.” He spat the name.

“He may have very valuable information,” Momoi advised him, knowing full well that his input made no difference to her. When she turned her hair swung playfully against her back. Upon a parting consideration, she glanced back over one shoulder and smirked, wondering whether to tell him. The day was still long; it would be fun to keep him up and paranoid for a bit. “About old friends.”

The pause he gave before answering was very telling. “I don’t care.”

Momoi giggled before walking back out of the room, heels clicking to herald her path.

When she secured the underground title of Queen Bee, the underground was actually the underground. Much like any clandestine operation, it thrived in shadows. These days, however, less than five years since The Hive’s inception at the top of the Zone trade, and their perfection of its marketability to more than just the lower class, it was more of a business like any other. The fact that the government turned a blind eye as long as the trade stayed on its own side of the kickbacks, combined with the fact that they couldn’t technically participate due to the niggling detail of gruesome and unrelenting murder, made it easier to operate within the boundaries of hush-hush protection circles. Of course, Aomine had always been her best protection. The Hive itself had always been her best protection, the best team, the best at following orders and putting plans into action.

It was Satsuki Momoi who pioneered the marketing of Zone to the upper class, the top echelon of new Phoenecan society. It turns out that all you needed to get people past the idea of an exponentially shortened lifespan was a flashy ad, a bit of sex appeal, and a little disclaimer at the end advising of the fact. “Warning, may decelerate physiological rejuvenation”. She came up with that. “Will cause you to die in your 20’s” was the actual thing they needed to say, to keep the bigwigs out of their hair when industry leaders, celebrities, and moguls started dropping dead for no apparent reason.

One of the newer ads was playing on the giant screens lining the entry hall in the Touou Hand Corporate Headquarters, starring a young model Momoi had personally scouted and had taken a particular liking to. The girl lived in the building now, and Momoi doted on her more than Aomine liked whenever he was awake enough to be aware of it. She’d keep her from enjoying the same fate as Aomine. If it was up to her, she’d keep her from ever trying it.

Momoi had never once tried Zone, and she intended to keep it that way. The endgame was not wealth, after all, nor even power. The endgame was finishing last, being able to sleep away a peaceful night after all her enemies were dead. The endgame was happiness, and she saw the fleeting nature of the happiness Zone provided

But with the death of her enemies would also, inevitably, come the death of her friends. She refused to believe things had to be that way. If alliance with the Shuutoku Guard would ever come to pass, there were rumors she definitely wanted to pursue, technologies she definitely wanted to invest in, which might allow her to keep the useful people in her life around for a bit longer.

First things first, though. She set her face in a wide grin as she opened the door to the crystal room.

“Kise!” She stepped in with her arms outstretched, stepping as heavily as possibly across the room toward the occupied settee. “It’s been too long.”

He did not stand up, but nodded in a subtle show of challenge as she approached. Did he actually expect her to flinch, though? The burnpaws he’d brought along were sitting rather calmly on either side of him, their shiny black coats catching the city lights through the surrounding glass of the wide open room. Though they were fully grown specimens, with long talons and obviously well-sharpened beaks, the way they moved their little docked ears always reminded her of puppies. Momoi patted one on the head as she passed and heard its tail thump heavily on the floor in submissive gratitude.

She met Kise’s smirk with one of her own and leaned down to hug him. As was the custom planetside, they kissed the air beside their cheeks, giving each the chance to examine the jewelry choices of the other.

“Diamond earrings,” Kise noted flatly.

“You as well,” Momoi responded with a chuckle.

“Who are you trying to impress, exactly?” He held onto her shoulders just a bit longer than any normal acquaintance might, and met her eyes before they moved apart, keeping them as she smiled and poured herself into the seat next to him.

“Asks the one who brought the burnpaws.” One of them chirped deeply and looked back at her as her foot brushed its back. She couldn’t help grinning at it, and moved the pointed toe of her shoe over its haunch.

“They seemed like good accessories today.”

“They’re meant to be intimidating. Don’t play me, Ryou-ta,” she sang the words softly but even as her finger danced in the air to punctuate them, Kise knew she meant to be taken no less than deathly serious.

Momoi had been an extractor before any of them. She didn’t like the messy side of the business, but she knew it inside and out (quite literally).

“I had an interesting meeting with our friends at Interpol today.” Interpol, as a term, had survived much longer than the actual concept had been legitimate. After the wars and the plague and the famine, it was still the official name of the government police force that patrolled and kept order in Phoeneca and its surrounding orbit.

“Do tell.”

Kise crossed one leg over the other and shifted the leashes into his other hand, clearing the space between them and symbolically opening up the idea of confidentiality. Momoi knew the signals. She shared secrets with Kise because, despite his relatively very high profile, he kept them well, and returned them in kind. Being the Industrial Ambassador for Pharmaceutical Reform, he also had some very interesting ties to some very lucrative secrets.

Working for the House of Kaijou – a designer drug cartel whose influence had grown from centuries of prominence – did not seem to be a hindrance in his political activities, as long as he made all of his photo-ops and filmed all the right public service announcements. Momoi looked at him, with his Zone-perfect face and his actual million-dollar smile, and took comfort in the fact that she remembered the insecure Kise who joined the Hive and fell sobbing to his knees when he was asked to cut off his first head, handle his first bloated organs before they could rupture and contaminate the blood.

He’d joined from a position of privilege. His parents had kept him after his Acetypical diagnosis. He was a loved and pampered Ace, reporting back about all the experimental “treatments” attempted by doctors in polite society to halt or retard the effects of the mutations. However, he was selfish enough – smart enough, Akashi had said – to reject that life.  He joined the Hive for excitement, and certainly found it.

His parents were killed by a competing cartel when the Hive rose to the top, as a show of war. He was only seventeen years old. The other members became his family. Some were closer than others.

“Aomine won’t be joining us.” Momoi read his expression, and his hesitation, quite well. She adjusted the dress around her thighs and offered him a tight smile of condolence.

“How is he?”

“Well,” she answered bluntly, coldly. Kise knew not to press the issue.

He cleared his throat and tried to forget about the absence of the person he obviously wanted to see. Momoi tried not to be jealous, but it was difficult to ever be jealous of her boys. As he began, one of the burnpaws stretched its little useless wings and yawned into a huff of impatience, moving to get more comfortable on the transparent floor of the crystal room. Momoi giggled at it, considered offering to buy one off of him.

“So my weekly meeting was today. This is normally no big deal; we go over current and potential business, who to stop watching, who to be a little mindful off, who to get off our tail. Money is exchanged, the usual.” Momoi nodded; she knew very well. Kise’s protection ties were so keen that Kaijou was free to conduct its business, like Touou, on planetside property. “But there was an introduction as well. There’s a new guy on the force.”

Momoi’s back straightened and she tilted her head gravely.

Kise nodded, taking her reaction as a need for more information. “His name is Kagami. Kagami Taiga. He’s apparently an off-planet kid who came back to Phoeneca to try his hand at the Interpol game. I’ve done some poking around, and it seems like he was on the Zone beat over on Utracia before this. Made a name there, is trying to move up. I wouldn’t take him lightly, he has a very impressive record. His record is strict, though, which worries me.”

“The chief is keeping that under control though, right?”

Kise took in a long, thoughtful breath. “I did speak to Riko, told her that I wasn’t happy about her new dog. She said she’d try to keep him on a tight leash, but I get the feeling that we might be in store for some sort of turnabout. Especially if—“

Momoi was nodding and listening until Kise hit that all-too-important pause, and her eyes flicked over to him severely. “You don’t think that will happen, do you?”

“I don’t know, word is he’s in recovery.”

“Let’s not even think about that. We took care of that years ago.” She didn’t tend to repeat herself, but as her hand wandered over to squeeze Kise’s thigh with a threatening slowness, she did. “Let’s not even think about that right now, and tell me about what you teased me with on the phone.”

“When they were leaving, I was taking stock of the area, you know? Making a mental note of who was in attendance, just to keep tabs where they’re needed.”

He went strangely silent, and leaned back into the settee with a poignant roll of his shoulders. Momoi wanted to give him the time he needed, but after only a couple of seconds she couldn’t help it. Her face softened and her eyebrows bowed, and she whispered, “Did you see him? Kise, unless you actually saw him, we can’t—“

He looked at her immediately, golden eyes still and wide in tacit understanding. “I wanted to tell you first. You don’t have to believe me, but he was there. Kurokocchi is back.” 


End file.
